The Motion Picture Assocation of America on Monday graciously stroked US Congress for promising $30 million towards fighting IP crime in 2010.
Hollywood's top lobbyist, MPAA chief executive Dan Glickman, also praised the success of a six-day Yuletide sting against counterfeit DVDs and CDs called "Operation Holiday Hoax."
The …

COMMENTS

Cleaned up web?

It is brilliant but at the same time it just seems to attract the wrong types for all of the wrong reasons.

Given the growth of web commerce and web ways of doing things and the original (?) notion of "any content goes" perhaps there is a need for a sanitised web and maybe it might cost a few sheckles more?

But given a "free for all" type web and another web where criminals and criminal activity are vetted out well, which one would be more attractive to families, schools, college, ISPs and content providers alike?

But..

There already exist sanitized networks that aren't really part of the Internet. It's called AOL.

Do you REALLY want the rest of the Internet to be like that?

Anyway, children shouldn't be on the Internet, period. Would you let your little kid call phone chat lines? What about playing outside at 2am alone? Then why let them onto a gigantic internetwork full of all sorts of wierdos chatting, where it's always 2am somewhere in the world?

You want sanitized, then get AOL or form a proper schools network that's separate from the rest of the public Internet. Leave the rest of us mature adults alone to download as much smut as we like.

Second that.

Given the choice between a free internet and a "sanitized" one I know which I'd choose.

And my choice wouldn't change one iota if I had kids. If anyone "sanitizes" the internet for them, it will be me. Some of the people who claim to be looking out for the children are just plain lunatics or career politicians with very obvious agendas and I'll wager their children are warped and emotionally maladjusted.

No thanks, I'll take freedom. It's a big responsibility, but you have to learn to take some responsibility for you and yours at some point in your life because sooner or later something bad will happen to you that "the government" can't help you with. You'll then have no choice but to grow a spine and deal with it yourself.

Maybe it's a cultural thing

@AC 15th December 2009 00:15 GMT

I don't agree at all. Being free for all is why the internet is great. Of course, this does not mean that that every page on the web is useful or appropriate, that's obvious. But that's not the point, the point is that if you would do what you suggest, you would ban some pages that might be useful for somebody else, and even more importantly, it would probably result in something like China.

Another thing might be information censoring which could be used very well by authorities etc.

Anyway, I suggest you move to China for example, if you would really like to see a censored web. I think nobody will be angry at you if you pay some more every billing period.

Re: Cleaned up web?

This has got to be a troll, well done.

On the off chance it isn't, and this pillock is actually serious, I've just spent the last 2 years campaigning against internet censorship in Australia, and it looks like we're winning. No thanks to moralising do-gooder bastards like AC above who think they know what's good for everyone. However, these creatures are fortunately in the minority, so you piss off and use your "sanitised web", son, and leave the rest of us to our much better "free for all" web.

"The MPAA, on behalf of the motion picture industry...

Great

Now my taxes are going towards putting people behind bars which my taxes pay for, so they can be non-productive members of society, because they sold a copy of something to someone who wasn't willing to pay what the market tries to demand.

Software and multimedia companies certainly need to be paid for their work but this farce has gone on long enough, people of a mindset to pay for something legit aren't looking for pirated copies in the first place, lost sales are just a terrible myth.

@Mectron

"the most dangerous criminal organisation in the history of mankind"

Spoken like a true Freetard! Of course all these "unauthorised" DVDs and CDs are just "fair use", and all of the money obtained by selling them would have gone to support new artists and independent film producers.

Still haven't got a clue.

"It claims 90 per cent of pirated films on DVD are from illicit camcording at theaters."

Yeah, right. That's what they'd like to think. I'm sorry to tell them that "Knockoff" Nigel has ways of getting much higher quality material. In fact it's often better than the official DVD because it doesn't have those nag-verts claiming "piracy is theft".

still waiting to hear of these new business models

cameras

Do they really think that most of what is pirated comes from handycams in cinemas?

I suppose if that is all their busts come back with then it might skew their opinion but many a time I have seen footage seemingly pulled straight from a digital desk or from a master dropped off at a duplicators by a courier. Guess those versions don't make it to Mexico.

If you see someone with a camera in your cinema.. just throw them out.

Re: oBanana not that goood then

Mectron,

Are you implying Hollywood is an Orwellian brainwashing industry .... a sort of sociopathic Big Brother on psychotropic anabolic steroids, which has frazzled itself and lost its way for the want of quality scripts/intelligent feeds/good old fashioned googleys rather than crazy curve balls?

If that in Actuality be the Reality, then is it easily Made Over to Fully Restore it with IT to its Phormer Positions of Media Glory, but it must be recognised that there are many more Very Willing and Able and Enabling Film and Media Industries around the World Playing the Similar Great Game albeit with Home Grown Universal Agendas. .......... and there are, of course, the Upstart New Kids in Town, already All Ready, Willing and Able and Enabled to Dominate the Playing Fields with Computer Machine Operating Systems, allowing One to Browse in Multiple Core Environments ..... which are very Convenient and innovative Global Operating Devices for Hellish Angels on Devilish Missions.

re. Great

People who produce and sell counterfeit DVDs are "productive members of society" in the same way that people who produce and use counterfeit money are.

Is someone who knowingly buys a stolen car a criminal or "someone who wasn't willing to pay what the market tries to demand"?

If people want something (DVDs, cars etc.) then they should pay what the market sees as a fair price, not just resort to crime. The argument about the incremental price of a DVD is futile; if it costs $100m to make a movie, should the first DVD be priced at $110m (for fair profit) and the rest just be free?

I have a question

For a very long time...

it's a common tactic to "brand" pieces of legislation so that they be explained in a 15 second sound bite. It's why the opponents of the inheritence tax started calling the "Death Tax", even someone with the attention span of a goldfish can work out the underlying "it's bad" message on that one.

Also I remember some famous poltical figure, saying that they looking for a book on the Stategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks, and the librarian eventually found it in the food section as someone belived that 'SALT Talks', go figure.

The more I read ...

.. the more I am convinced that any serious mainstream use of the web will depend upon a sanitised version being available to people on choice.

Of course, el reg may wish to keep it's part on the mean, gritty n dirty side.

What, one wonders, would that do for user/visitor analytics?

Will conflict, theft, thieving, abusing able web be dynamically and evolutionary superior over a safer sanitised one.

And if safer sanitising is the way to go who will do and take responsibility and responsibly lead?

Government?

Civil servants?

A loose or non-loose gaggle of interested parties?

It is ultimately a collective decision that requires collective support (apart from the non-collective types and I guess there will always be a bunch of these as any sanitation is highly likely to interfere with their funding streams?)

And there I was...

... thinking they'd do something about actual piracy, like those jolly chaps hijacking super tankers and holding the crews hostage for ransom for months. But no, it's those greedy gluttons at the MPAA at it again.

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Isn't it amazing the return you can get just by investing in politicians, a couple of thousand dollars in 'donations' and a re-investment of $30M of taxpayers money in supporting the MAFIAA. You can see the donations made by the MAFIAA to Senator Pat Leahy, one of the sponsors of the PRO-IP,

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/fec/?id=592&cycle=2009-2010

Meanwhile, in other news, the creative industries victimised (their words) by copyright infringement (there corrected it for you) report that they have made $15,498,296,462 (that's over 15 Billion dollars about the same as the GDP of Paraguay) from the most copied film of 2008, Dark Knight (IMDB figure for the USA only, world wide figures are higher).

Another folly

Just great. More spending on joyrides and television commercials, all for the sake of Hollywood? Why so much concern for entertainment? Never before have so many been so overpaid for so little. Maybe that's why government types sympathize with the purveyors.